“I think people have been told ‘the committee can’t get on with him’ or ‘the committee can’t work with him’ and that it would be better if I stood down.

“I don’t know how it will go. I think if all the membership were fully invited, in the circumstances, they would not like it and not vote for it (but) I don’t know if all members have been invited.

“I don’t even know yet where the meeting is being held.”

Mr Webb was a high-profile local campaigner for Ukip for 14 years before he was elected on to the borough council.

He has the highest attendance record out of all the council’s 48 members, having attended 48 meetings in the last municipal year.

He was a familiar feature at the Millennium Clock – which he dubbed ‘Tunbridge Wells’ own Speaker’s Corner – with a loud hailer and his bulldog dressed in a Union Flag.

Mr Webb said he believed fellow Ukip member and borough councillor Piers Wauchope – who won the second seat in Mr Webb’s ward of Rusthall two years ago – was behind the plan to turf him out.

Mr Wauchope attended five borough council meetings in the past year.

Asked how he would feel if he was ousted, Mr Webb said: “I would feel let down and feel it was manoeuvring by Piers who seems to be on his own agenda. I have spent 14 years slogging away for Ukip, I believe in its principles and I am hoping Piers will be removed and when he is there will be a happy ship again. One member of Ukip has written to me and said ‘this stinks’.”

Asked if he would consider standing as an independent because of the political plotting, he said: “I have considered going independent.”

The minutes of Ukip’s committee meeting on May 28 state: “A proposal was carried that an extraordinary general meeting of the Tunbridge Wells branch be called to consider a motion to be proposed by councillor Piers Wauchope and seconded by Chris Hoare that the councillor Victor Webb be replaced as chairman of the Tunbridge Wells Ukip branch.”

When asked directly if he was lobbying to oust his local party chairman, Mr Wauchope refused to reply, stating: “Victor is the hardest-working councillor in Tunbridge Wells and a great asset not only for Rusthall but for everyone in the borough.”